Christian Cameron - God of War - The Epic Story of Alexander the Great

We slaughtered them as they ran by us – packed against the far cliff, pushing with all their might to escape, even shedding their armour to climb the cliffs. More than a thousand of them died – some men say two thousand, a fifth of the fighting strength of their whole nation slaughtered in a few minutes.

Unfortunately, we could not pursue them on horseback. The downslope of the pass on the far side was too steep, had too many switchbacks, and even in panicked flight, Thracians were a redoubtable foe. Men threw spears, or stood at the bend in the road over the pass to cut at our feet. Had the ground been a little flatter, we might have ended the Thracians as a people for ever. As it was, they died and died, so that the streams that ran down both faces of the pass ran red.

I was carried along with the pursuit for a long way – maybe ten stades, all the way down the pass on the far side to a deep stream with steep banks where one of their princes made a stand with several hundred men in good armour. I could see him – he had a silk standard, some sort of windsock such as the Sarmatians use, and his helmet was covered in gold and jewels. They stood atop the bank on the far side of that icy stream, and we lost as many men trying to push them off the bank as we lost in the whole battle. Three times we crossed the stream, and three times we were thrown back.

Alexander led fifty hypaspitoi across the river farther down, where the water flowed like a torrent and an error meant certain death. He was the first across, and a dozen armoured Thracians ran at him, and he stood his ground, killed one, and then another, and then Alectus was with him.

He was the king. We threw ourselves across that stream to reach him, and the Thracians gave way, and we had all but bridged the torrent with bodies. I ran south, towards where I’d last seen the king, and I found him sore pressed – Alectus with him, Philip Longsword down, twenty more hypaspitoi trying to push him into the rear and fifty Thracians hammering at them.

He was unmarked, and he’d killed a third man, and he had a quiet smile on his face – the smile of a man who’s made a fine helmet, or carved a beautiful wood panel of Herakles, for example.

‘Ptolemy,’ he said warmly as I came up. ‘Well done.’

Behind him, the last of the Thracians went down, neither asking nor giving quarter, as half a thousand Macedonians buried them in blades. Alexander stepped up on a big rock as if he hadn’t been fighting for his life a moment before.

‘Just for a moment, I thought we’d have them all,’ he said. He started walking to where we’d fought our way over the stream. The chieftain, their prince, lay pinned to the earth with a pair of spears. His banner lay fallen beside him.

‘This one saved all his friends,’ he said. ‘A true hero. A worthy adversary.’

The man moaned.

Alexander smiled. ‘If he lives, sign him up,’ he said cheerfully. ‘How were the wagons? You look terrible.’

I laughed.

We didn’t even rest a full day. That afternoon, we plundered the Thracian camp carefully – it was a rich haul of gold and women and children – and sent everything back to the coast with our wounded and Laodon’s pezhetaeroi, who had fought brilliantly and were held to deserve the ‘vacation’.

We had about a hundred dead and twice that many wounded – a small enough bill for the victory, but still a visible percentage of our forces. Men were shifted back and forth, and the net result was two larger taxeis of roughly four thousand men each when we started down the mountains on to the plain of the Danube.

All of us assumed that the Thracians were beaten. Even Alexander assumed it. We kept guards and flankers out – we weren’t foolish – but as we marched towards the Danube, we assumed we’d broken the Thracians not just for now but for years to come.

We were wrong.

The Triballians retreated in front of us – the survivors of the battle reinforced by other tribesmen – with their livestock and their families – those we hadn’t taken at the pass. They retreated, and we pursued, eager to catch them. On the third day, the Prodromoi reported that the Thracians had started a boat lift to move their families to a big island in the Danube.

Alexander threw the hypaspitoi forward, leading them himself.

It was sheer luck that one of our Hetaeroi patrols – under Nearchus – tripped over an army of Thracians coming up behind us. They were half a day away, and we’d almost missed them.

The trap was closing. The Thracians behind us now held the pass at our rear and had at least another ten thousand men.

I sent a messenger for Alexander and halted the army, putting out a ring of scouts and dispatching the skirmishers – the Psiloi – to the rear to slow the enemy if they appeared. I asked Philip the Red – remember, I wasn’t the commander of anything except one squadron of Hetaeroi – to scout to our rear, and he agreed.

Hephaestion was with Alexander, Antipater was in Pella, and none of Parmenio’s precious family had arrived to take command of anything, so that our army had Alexander – and no level below him. In the next few hours, that showed. I was unwilling to take command – it wasn’t my job, and I felt the weight of Alexander’s displeasure here more than any other place. If I took command, there might be a price.

On the other hand, we all knew what to do.

Alexander came back after the sun was high in the sky. He approved all of our joint decisions, and then ordered the entire army to counter-march behind the Psiloi. He put the Prodromoi well out on to the flanks and we moved forward, leaving our baggage to the mercy of the Thracians behind us. I hated that decision, even as I understood it – that was Thaïs being left unprotected. He didn’t leave a single slinger behind.

Our Psiloi went forward into another ambush. The force behind us had formed up in a wooded valley that fed into the Danube, right across our line of march, with steep sides and heavy woods to cover them, and as the archers prowled forward along the open floor of the valley, arrows fell on them from the trees, and Thracian noblemen on ponies charged them and killed a dozen before they scattered.

An hour later, I sat beside Alexander as he looked up the pass. I was eating a sausage – I remember thinking how delicious it was, even though every bite hurt my jaw and my nose.

We were all hungry.

Alexander looked at the pass for a long time. It formed a shallow lambda with the point aimed at Pella – to the south.

It would entail a journey of a hundred stades or more, across unknown country, to go around.

‘Well,’ he said, after a long hundred heartbeats, ‘I don’t want to attack into that.’

I think we all sighed with relief. It looked like a death trap.

As if to underscore its peril, a Thracian arrow whispered out of the air and fell – well short, but close enough to make Poseidon shy.

Alexander looked around, and his eye fell on Cleitus, not me. ‘Cleitus,’ he said.

Cleitus grinned. ‘Uh-oh,’ he said, with mock despair.

Alexander nodded. ‘Take the Psiloi forward again. Far enough that they can almost cut you off. Make them taste their victory before you let the Psiloi run. Get them to chase you down their precious hills.’ He nodded at the rest of us. ‘Form in loose order – over here, behind the edge of the downslope. Spears down so we aren’t visible. If they pursue Cleitus, we’ll charge, and chance it. If we fail – don’t go more than a quarter of the way up the pass. Understand?’

Many men didn’t. Again, it was a simple plan. The Psiloi went forward as bait, and the rest of us formed a counter-ambush to attack the Thracians if they were stupid enough to bite down.